Content marketing trends 2019 – mid-year review

Every year, we see marketing experts predicting their trends for the year ahead. While some trends fall off the wagon, a few of them do pick up pace and catch our attention here at Freshwater.

In 2019, experts predicted a mix of new content marketing trends as well as little reminders of traditional tools we should not forget to invest in. Now that we have reached the middle of the year, we thought it would be a good opportunity to check in on the top content marketing trends for 2019, and see where we are now.

Artificial intelligence

It’s been predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to impact content marketing and the way marketers produce content over the next few years. AI has already influenced the way brands communicate with their consumers. This year, more brands are embracing AI to help them to analyse data about their audiences and to discover their interests and preferences. For example, machine learning-based algorithms have enabled ecommerce websites to learn more about their consumers and present them with personalised content and results.

It’s not only the ecommerce industry that is benefitting from AI – language generation is helping content marketers to churn out content on a larger scale. Using algorithms, AI is able to create summaries and short versions of longer documents and personalise them for different audiences. This has said to cut research time and costs by replacing humans with technology.

Voice search

Another content marketing trend for 2019 is voice search. ComScore has predicted that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches, which isn’t surprising considering how many devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa are in people’s homes. With that said, marketers are already preparing their content for voice search. This means making sure content is optimised for mobile and desktop in order for it to rank highly in search engines and obtain the featured snippet spots. You can learn more about voice search optimisation here.

Content strategy

According to SEMrush, strategy was one of the top 15 topics discussed on Twitter with #ContentMarketing in 2019. Instead of businesses saying ‘we need to do content’, professionals are realising the need to invest in content marketing as a tool, and a strategy helps businesses to ensure that they are creating content that meets their objectives. Setting goals and establishing KPIs for measuring content marketing ROI are just a couple of the benefits of a content marketing strategy, making sure businesses produce valuable content with a purpose – and not just for the sake of it.

Using data

One of the last content marketing trends for 2019 is using data to support and inform content marketing strategies. At Freshwater, we consider data analysis a priority. With millions of pieces of content published on the internet every day, data helps us to learn more about our audiences and create strategic and considered content that’s going to catch their attention.

With a team of content marketers, we’re always keeping an eye on the trends, and these are just a few of the content marketing trends we have been following in 2019. You can learn more about our creative content and copywriting services on our content marketing page.